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NOT THE MET: Gehry calls his Guggenheim Bilbao รยan antidote to the Metropolitan Museum syndrome.รย (Guggenheim Museum Bilbao,1997. Photo by รยฉDavid Heald, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York) |
In "Conversations With Frank Gehry," Los Angeles writer Barbara Isenberg talks with the Pritzker Prize-winning architect, who's behind such iconic buildings as Walt Disney Concert Hall and Guggenheim Bilbao. They cover his life, pivotal career moments, including the competition for Bilbao, and influences. Following are exclusive excerpts from the book, published by Alfred A. Knopf, which goes on sale Tuesday.
Is there a Los Angeles style of architecture?
Los Angeles has an incredible light and a forgiving climate. You don't have to use double glazing, and you don't have to think about snow loads and snow conditions. The further south you go, the more open you can get. But the generation after me is working all over the world, like I am, so we've had to adapt to other climates. I had to adapt to a northern climate in Bilbao.
Do you take a Los Angeles sensibility with you?
It's not so contrived. You just go for the bigger picture, I think. At least I do.
Do you ever think about how your professional life might have been different had you stayed in Toronto?
Los Angeles is quite a different city from Toronto. The Canadian psyche is much more conservative, quieter, laid-back -- or at least it was when I lived there. L.A. when I got here was brash, raucous, frontier. Carny business. The movies. The development was vast and rampant. Whole neighborhoods seemed to spring up instantly in desert locations. It represented a kind of openness and freedom because it was risk taking somehow. There was an edge to it. Some of it was greedy and awful, and some of it was positive and moving. But it represented a kind of energy and resourcefulness, a willingness to try things. I think if I'd stayed in Canada as an architect, I wouldn't have grown up with the sense of freedom that I got out here. There's a lot more freedom because Los Angeles doesn't have the burden of history.
::
When did your relationships with artists start being important to you?
From the beginning of my adult life, I always related more to artists than to architects. I found it easier and more exciting to be with them. When I was studying at USC, art and architecture were taught in the same building, Harris Hall, and some of the classes were in the same rooms. So the entire time I was at USC studying architecture, I was exposed to the USC art program. Because I had been a member of the art program, I kept trying to bring the two groups together. It was like they were on two different planets, and I could never figure that out. So I lived this kind of double life while I was in architecture school. Which I guess is what I continue to do.
When I finished architecture school, I liked Kahn and Corbusier and other architects, but I still felt there was something more that the artists were doing. They were pushing into a visual language, and I thought that if a visual language could apply to art, which it obviously could, it could also apply to architecture.
During my year in France, I spent a lot of time looking at Romanesque churches and Romanesque paintings, and the way they fit with the architecture. The architecture and the paintings were at peace with each other, and I've always looked for that. The only artist of our time who I found did it with success was [nineteenth-century Mexican muralist José Clemente] Orozco, and you see it in the orphanage in Guadalajara, Mexico, where Orozco's paintings hold their own with the architecture. Diego Rivera's paintings didn't play as well with the architecture. The buildings were more powerful. Orozco changed the balance -- his paintings were as powerful as the architecture.
There's long been discussion of art versus architecture in your work.
There are some artists who are offended when you use the word "art" for a building that has toilets in it. So to support their narrow-mindedness, I avoid use of the term. But history has acknowledged that Bernini was an artist as well as an architect, and so was Michelangelo. It's possible that an architect can also be an artist.
Do you think of buildings like Walt Disney Concert Hall or the Guggenheim Bilbao as sculpture or architecture? They've been called both.
I'm not comfortable using the word "sculpture." I've used it before, but I don't think it's really the right word. It's a building. The words "sculpture," "art," and "architecture" are loaded, and when we use them, they have a lot of different meanings. So I'd rather just say I'm an architect.
::
So you agreed to participate in a competition?
If it was not a drawn-out competition. I said it's just too hard, and you waste too much money otherwise. This was a three-week competition. They gave each of us ten thousand dollars, and it cost me forty thousand to do it. But we won.
Is there a Los Angeles style of architecture?
Los Angeles has an incredible light and a forgiving climate. You don't have to use double glazing, and you don't have to think about snow loads and snow conditions. The further south you go, the more open you can get. But the generation after me is working all over the world, like I am, so we've had to adapt to other climates. I had to adapt to a northern climate in Bilbao.
Do you take a Los Angeles sensibility with you?
It's not so contrived. You just go for the bigger picture, I think. At least I do.
Do you ever think about how your professional life might have been different had you stayed in Toronto?
Los Angeles is quite a different city from Toronto. The Canadian psyche is much more conservative, quieter, laid-back -- or at least it was when I lived there. L.A. when I got here was brash, raucous, frontier. Carny business. The movies. The development was vast and rampant. Whole neighborhoods seemed to spring up instantly in desert locations. It represented a kind of openness and freedom because it was risk taking somehow. There was an edge to it. Some of it was greedy and awful, and some of it was positive and moving. But it represented a kind of energy and resourcefulness, a willingness to try things. I think if I'd stayed in Canada as an architect, I wouldn't have grown up with the sense of freedom that I got out here. There's a lot more freedom because Los Angeles doesn't have the burden of history.
::
When did your relationships with artists start being important to you?
From the beginning of my adult life, I always related more to artists than to architects. I found it easier and more exciting to be with them. When I was studying at USC, art and architecture were taught in the same building, Harris Hall, and some of the classes were in the same rooms. So the entire time I was at USC studying architecture, I was exposed to the USC art program. Because I had been a member of the art program, I kept trying to bring the two groups together. It was like they were on two different planets, and I could never figure that out. So I lived this kind of double life while I was in architecture school. Which I guess is what I continue to do.
When I finished architecture school, I liked Kahn and Corbusier and other architects, but I still felt there was something more that the artists were doing. They were pushing into a visual language, and I thought that if a visual language could apply to art, which it obviously could, it could also apply to architecture.
During my year in France, I spent a lot of time looking at Romanesque churches and Romanesque paintings, and the way they fit with the architecture. The architecture and the paintings were at peace with each other, and I've always looked for that. The only artist of our time who I found did it with success was [nineteenth-century Mexican muralist José Clemente] Orozco, and you see it in the orphanage in Guadalajara, Mexico, where Orozco's paintings hold their own with the architecture. Diego Rivera's paintings didn't play as well with the architecture. The buildings were more powerful. Orozco changed the balance -- his paintings were as powerful as the architecture.
There's long been discussion of art versus architecture in your work.
There are some artists who are offended when you use the word "art" for a building that has toilets in it. So to support their narrow-mindedness, I avoid use of the term. But history has acknowledged that Bernini was an artist as well as an architect, and so was Michelangelo. It's possible that an architect can also be an artist.
Do you think of buildings like Walt Disney Concert Hall or the Guggenheim Bilbao as sculpture or architecture? They've been called both.
I'm not comfortable using the word "sculpture." I've used it before, but I don't think it's really the right word. It's a building. The words "sculpture," "art," and "architecture" are loaded, and when we use them, they have a lot of different meanings. So I'd rather just say I'm an architect.
::
So you agreed to participate in a competition?
If it was not a drawn-out competition. I said it's just too hard, and you waste too much money otherwise. This was a three-week competition. They gave each of us ten thousand dollars, and it cost me forty thousand to do it. But we won.
L.A. for less than the price of sunblock. 
